OKComputer1016
07/06/08, 01:51 PM
Grace Gale - Stronger Faster Science
Record Label: Creep Records
Release Date: May 27, 2008
Oh, cool, another band who sounds like this. Grace Gale’s latest finds the ex-metalcore group trying their absolute hardest to fit into the pop-punk scene after having somewhat established themselves as a metalcore group. My complaint is not a harkening for the past because it’s not that they were ever very original. It’s just that this new style finds them operating on the creativity of a Stepford wife who is in a coma.
The problem is that a few old clichés (like the hilarious Every Time I Die rip-off in “Pack Mentality”: a half-sung, half-yelled refrain of “This is a party, baby!” complete with a half-assed artificial harmonic squeal) stick around to intermingle with the newly-adopted, highly-formulaic radio calculations. It’s the most awkward transition ever, magically transforming a bad song into a terrible song just like that. Well, that’s one of the problems.
Another is that the songwriting is just totally lame. This basically sounds like some unsuccessful cover band taking the stage at a Sweet 16 party, picturing grandeur while they flirt with the underage fanbase. Every riff is familiar, every drumbeat is borrowed, and every whiny vocal is an instant migraine. It all just goes nowhere. Well, okay, it goes to the mall.
“Fairweather” stands out as the album’s high point, if there is one. It’s all acoustic, so that’s at least a little bit of a deviation from the standard plot; but the bad part about an acoustic track is that it makes you focus more on the nauseating yelp of new singer Joel Owen, who seems to be the culprit behind the radio domination quest. It makes sense that a frontman would have a fair amount of say in a band’s artistic direction, but not in the way presented here.
And are those violin strings plucked in the background? Do producers even care which band is which anymore? Let’s have every kid who is in any band just work on one song, and then just play it over and over – that way nobody needs to spend time writing anything. And yeah, those are the things I had to say about the best song on the album. So use that as a sort of scale, and you can picture the rest of the tracks.
Like “I Hate You Tennessee,” which is like a Panic at the Disco song, because apparently, that is another band Grace Gale had listened to recently. The organ doesn’t add dimension to the track, it just apes the Beatles bastardization of the current pop market in a manner that’s, to steal the band’s own lyric, “anything but subtle.”
Grace Gale ought to have gone one step further and changed their name to Taking Back Saturday. Their old stuff at least had some metallic aggression to it, but this is weaker, slower, and ... whatever the opposite of 'science' is. Stronger Faster Science doesn’t ever really need to be listened to by anyone.
conformity
myspace.com/gracegale (http://www.myspace.com/gracegale)
Record Label: Creep Records
Release Date: May 27, 2008
Oh, cool, another band who sounds like this. Grace Gale’s latest finds the ex-metalcore group trying their absolute hardest to fit into the pop-punk scene after having somewhat established themselves as a metalcore group. My complaint is not a harkening for the past because it’s not that they were ever very original. It’s just that this new style finds them operating on the creativity of a Stepford wife who is in a coma.
The problem is that a few old clichés (like the hilarious Every Time I Die rip-off in “Pack Mentality”: a half-sung, half-yelled refrain of “This is a party, baby!” complete with a half-assed artificial harmonic squeal) stick around to intermingle with the newly-adopted, highly-formulaic radio calculations. It’s the most awkward transition ever, magically transforming a bad song into a terrible song just like that. Well, that’s one of the problems.
Another is that the songwriting is just totally lame. This basically sounds like some unsuccessful cover band taking the stage at a Sweet 16 party, picturing grandeur while they flirt with the underage fanbase. Every riff is familiar, every drumbeat is borrowed, and every whiny vocal is an instant migraine. It all just goes nowhere. Well, okay, it goes to the mall.
“Fairweather” stands out as the album’s high point, if there is one. It’s all acoustic, so that’s at least a little bit of a deviation from the standard plot; but the bad part about an acoustic track is that it makes you focus more on the nauseating yelp of new singer Joel Owen, who seems to be the culprit behind the radio domination quest. It makes sense that a frontman would have a fair amount of say in a band’s artistic direction, but not in the way presented here.
And are those violin strings plucked in the background? Do producers even care which band is which anymore? Let’s have every kid who is in any band just work on one song, and then just play it over and over – that way nobody needs to spend time writing anything. And yeah, those are the things I had to say about the best song on the album. So use that as a sort of scale, and you can picture the rest of the tracks.
Like “I Hate You Tennessee,” which is like a Panic at the Disco song, because apparently, that is another band Grace Gale had listened to recently. The organ doesn’t add dimension to the track, it just apes the Beatles bastardization of the current pop market in a manner that’s, to steal the band’s own lyric, “anything but subtle.”
Grace Gale ought to have gone one step further and changed their name to Taking Back Saturday. Their old stuff at least had some metallic aggression to it, but this is weaker, slower, and ... whatever the opposite of 'science' is. Stronger Faster Science doesn’t ever really need to be listened to by anyone.
conformity
myspace.com/gracegale (http://www.myspace.com/gracegale)